The Helvetica Venture
by Kyt Dotson
Summary: A girl has the looming prospect of a long, boring winter break to look forward to. Fortunately, she has friends who play the MMO World of Warcraft. These are her strange misadventures in the land of Azeroth.
1. Much Ado About the Ordinary

Imagine a room, an ordinary 15'x12' sunken into the recesses of a suburban home with one door exiting into an off-white hallway. Carpeting so compacted from years of use and little attention from a vacuum cleaner that its color could no longer be described—as the brochure did—as apricot, but instead retains a desaturated peach. Even that color hasn't been seen for ages, the floor is missing in action, buried beneath piles of dark clothing, haphazardly flung books, and discarded flyers. Even sunlight thinks twice before attempting to slide between the slats of the window shades.

There is but one light. There is ever only one light.

That light is the wan glow of a 19" monitor casting hazy contrasts of black against the shrouded mounds and mountains in the room that form foothills and hidden paths leading between the three points of interest of the entire domain: the bed, the door, and the computer.

Imagine a girl, an ordinary 5'3" hunched over with teenage bad posture, spending her winter break at home from school in the wan light of her computer. She is ordinary, as ordinary standards go, except for the ghostly complexion of an individual who has not seen their fair share of sun. She is neither popular nor shunned by her classmates and has a regular clique that she runs with during the school days. She has a weekend job working at the local comic book store, smiling while passing out flyers and posters. But she's taken the next two weekends off.

She doesn't have a name; she hadn't chosen one yet.

On the table nearby, taking up the only clear space in the entire room, is a green box. Imagine a box, an ordinary 5¼"x 7½" video game box sporting fold-out inserts for the cover and a preternatural lightness to its heft that belies the contents stored within. Emblazoned over the surface—above the oh-so-handsome staring face of a blonde elf with vorpal eyebrows and nuclear green eyes—display the words: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.

"You haven't played one of these games before, have you?" asked the screen that comes up after she installs the game.

Now, to an ordinary person—which for the most part she is—a computer talking, or at least inviting questions of this earnest and soul-searching sort would have seemed strange, but after a certain point for everyone, ordinary must end and extraordinary begin. In her usual day the inanimate have in fact a lot more anima than most people give them credit for, especially computers.

"No," she replied, "but a lot of my friends are playing it. And they all say that I should try. So I'm going to."

"Okay. What shard are they on?"

"Shard?"

"Where did they say they played?"

She thought hard. She recalled them telling her, repeatedly in fact, to remember a particular word—or world maybe—so that she could find them when she finally arrived.

"Thunderhorn."

The screen changed, swirling into a selection of faces. The currently chosen, a green, beefy fellow holding an axe in one hand and displaying a sizable set of yellowed lower fangs stared back at her.

"That's an orc."

"I don't think I want to be an orc. Green just doesn't match my eyes. I think I was told to be a blood elf." A click later and a smile crossed her lips. "Yes. Much better." Displayed on the screen was a tragically thin thing with exaggerated eyebrows and glowing eyes, sporting a very large sword.

"You're going to have to choose a name. We can't have people traipsing around with it all hanging out, nameless. It's just not decent."

"What about Helvetica?" the girl suggested. "I like the sound of that word. It's sharp and pointy."

"Sorry to break it to you, but Helvetica is a sans-serif: it has no points. Why don't you go with Garamond."

"That sounds round. I'm not round."

"Suit yourself."

She spent a lot more time on Helvetica's hair than she ever did on her own in real life. Flipping back and forth between different hairstyles (even though there only seemed to be seven of them) and changing the color over and over until she found something she liked. In fact, compared to the time it took her to install the game it took her three times as long to choose a look.

"Are we ready to go yet?"

"I think—no wait."

_Click_. The hair changed again from something loopy and layered to a more somber, refined hairdo.

"Now?"

"I don't know. Does this hair color look good with this—"

"What do I look like, a stylist? Do you like it?"

"Yes. I guess so."

"Then go with it."

"Fine, fine," she said, still wondering maybe what her elf would look like with short blonde hair (like hers) instead of long white hair. The mouse moved lazily, almost as if it were pretending to stretch so that it could get its arm around one of the buttons in a movie theater…

"Oh no you don't!"

"What, I was just—"

"Trying to pull a fast one on me."

"But I was—"

"Do you want me to pull this video game over to the side of the road, missy?"

She pouted. "Well, no…but—"

"Then get a move on! Move it! Move it!"

"I can see that I'm not going to win this one. I'm going. I'm going."

_Click?_ _Click-click-click. Clickity-click._

"Did you just change her hair again?"

Pretending innocence she said, "She's always had white-blonde hair."

"You changed her earrings!"

"Mm, they were tacky."

"Can we get going now?"

"Yes. Fine."

_CLICK!_

Imagine a start screen, an ordinary—no, in fact it was not an ordinary start screen. As the dear reader may already know there comes a time in the life of every story that extraordinary lies ahead and ordinary is left behind.

And for this story it is that time.


	2. Orientation is Such Sweet Sorrow

The screen flickered and refocused on vision of verdant green fields, trees, and golden bordered buildings with a vaguely Arabian curvature. The view pulled forward as if it were a small child being dragged forward by the line of a kite and the voice dropped somewhat into a liquid baritone—reminding her somewhat of a movie preview announcer—as it began to narrate an eloquent and looping speech.

"For nearly seven thousand years the high elves cultivated a shining, magical kingdom hidden deep within the forests of Northern Lordaeron—"

"What's Lordaeron?"

"—but five years ago the undead Scourge invaded Quel'Thalas and drove the elves to the brink of extinction. Lead by the evil Death Knight Arthas—"

"Ooh, scary…" she said, snickering. "Death Knight, how goth. Vlah, I'll bet he does not drink _wine_."

As if considering her flippancy, the voice paused for just a moment before going on. "…the Scourge destroyed the mystical Sunwell, thereby severing the elves from the source of their arcane power. Though the scars of that conflict are evident, the remaining elves have banded together and retaken much of their homeland. Calling themselves Blood Elves these grim survivors are comm—"

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait… Blood Elves! What kind of a ponce name is that?"

The narration screeched to a halt as did the video playback of sweeping fields of grass, tall trees, and golden flanged buildings, the sound produced likened itself readily to that of a needle scraping across a record.

"Are you going to listen or not?" the game demanded. "I have this whole spiel to go through and I cannot get along with you interrupting me every other sentence. Really, you are a burden."

"Hey, I'm not the one talking about Blood Elves."

"I'm not the one _playing_ _one_ in a _video game_. Really, can I catch a break here?"

She snickered. "Blood Elves, fo sho."

The game sighed, a deep, reverberating sigh that one sighs out of the depths of one's soul—or at least whatever video games have instead of a soul, a murky and reverent place made up of pixels, bits, and bytes. It paused for so long, pondering, that the girl started to hit random keys, trying to wake it up.

"Hey. I'm sorry," she said, "I didn't mean to insult you. It's all. It's just kinda cheesy and melodramatic don't you think?"

"Alright." The game clapped its hands together, or made as if it were doing so. "What if instead I 'modified' the story somewhat so that I can put it into your language, the vulgar argot as it were. _Capice_?"

"Er, what?"

The scenes that she had been watching rewound themselves with a sudden sucking sound. Golden limned buildings, verdant trees, green fields all _wooshed_ back the way they had come in rapid motion and, when it reached the beginning, the sweeping vision began to play itself out again.

"For decades the denizens of the local mall had developed themselves a singularly magnificent clique, ruling over much of the stores and pagodas that stood there. But, several months ago the unruly—"

She laughed and interjected, "Trendies."

"—Trendies, so-called the Scourge, invaded the mall and brought that heavenly dream to an end. Lead by the evil Trend Setter Arthas the Scourge—"

"Built a Hot Topic."

"Okay… The Scourge opened a Hot Topic in the mall, thereby upsetting the precious balance of Trendies to mall rats."

The voice paused there as if waiting for her to make another snarky comment. Instead she waved at the screen in a fashion that seemed to say, "Go on. Go on."

"And though this war is now long over, the Hot Topic remains. The lingering survivors of the original cliques have rebuilt and have reclaimed much of their homeland. In an attempt to make themselves feel better, they have begun buying too much junk from the mall, even from Hot Topic. In the end, your people still have further threats to face, not least among them their addiction to product, which threatens to turn them also into Trendies."

She applauded, "Bravo! That's so much funnier than the story in the manual."

"Why thank you, that's the first nice thing— Hold on a sec. You _read _the manual? You _already know_ the story!"

Of course, the story in the manual was convoluted, stuffy, boring, and really didn't have the lively nature of a video game narrating to her, so she hadn't really thought much on it. "Yes. Prince Arthas basically rode into their magical city, knocked over their precious Sunwell, wham-bam-no-thankyou-ma'am, and then ran off into the sunset. Leaving the blood elves to weep and pine over their loss. Unsurprisingly they went emo, got addicted to tapping the vein, and here we are."

She beamed cheerfully as the game glowered as best it could, which rendered more in a crinkling about the edges of the screen.

"Then why did you let me go on like that? It was downright embarrassing trying to put that in language you could understand."

"You did a delightful job at it too, but I'm not a mall rat."

"Could have fooled me. Tacky wardrobe, band posters on your wall, all you're missing is a lava lamp from Spencer's."

"Wouldn't touch the place with a ten-foot-pole."

"You got me at the pre-release party!" the game exulted triumphantly. "That _I know_ was at the mall."

"It was closed."

The video game narrowed its eyes as much as a game could do such a thing without contorting several laws of physics that don't exist yet.

"Fine," it said. "You win. Shall we get on?"

During their discussion the tour-on-rails had stopped somewhere high above a square filled with traipsing blood elves and stomping arcano-mechanical golems. She could almost see her face staring back up from far below in the reflection of a fountain when the ride kicked back in again.

_Woosh!_ It fast-forwarded, blurring green, gold, and blue of sky together into a bending streak that reminded her of grass stains on a pair of faded Levi's and almost as abruptly she came out of it. The view resolved into a large green field, with an alabaster building haloed with yellow. Nearby, several expectant faces with glowing eyes gazed at her as if expecting her to say something.

"Death to the Trendies!" she shouted, brandishing her sword high.

"WTF?" asked someone to her right.

Somewhere, very far away from all of this, a sigh echoed through the sky. The kind of sigh that says, "I can see where this is going, and I can't say that I like it. Not at all. Not at all."


	3. Helvetica Receives Her First Quest

Helvetica felt overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and throngs rushing all around her. She was surrounded by dozens of other stick thin blood elves, their glowing eyes sliding past her in luminous blurs. Once and a while a blue name floating above a pastel head caught her attention, such gems as "Bubblehearth," "Omgelf," "Dulcewynna," and "Toosexyformysword." She stared in awe at the alabaster ponderous curves and sweep of the tower she stood next to, a yellow inlay etching flitted playfully across the opalescent surface and transitioned across blood red pincushion bubbles before finally reaching the summit of the goldenrod and red roof.

The sight of the tower captured her attention so totally she didn't look where she was going—or maybe it was the male blood elf, dancing and stripping down to his skivvies. None of this mattered, of course, because while admiring—and backpedaling—she bumped into someone else. They went down together in a mass of easily fractured limbs, bleached hair, incandescent eyes, and even managed to tangle their eyebrows.

"Just…just hold still," the blood elf woman said as she carefully prized their eyebrows apart. "Do my ears look okay?" she asked, delicately touching the overlong points of cartilage that extended well above her head.

In sympathetic response, Helvetica checked her own ears and found them to be undamaged. "They're fine she said." She would have gone on, but something floating above Magistrix Eona's head (her name displayed in prominent green also above her head, but that wasn't as interesting as what hovered above it.) "Did you know that a giant, neon-yellow exclamation point is bobbing above your head?"

"Oh yes, I know," she said. "All of us who give out quests have one of these." She held out a little device that looked a lot like a remote control. "Watch this." _Press._ The exclamation point vanished. _Press._ It reappeared. _Press-press-press-press._ As Helvetica watched it rotate through a various set of symbols and colors: yellow and grey question-marks, a grey exclamation point, a pound sign, an ellipsis—_Brraa-Zzt!_

She winced away from the bright flash of light and the smell of ozone filled the air. Erona smacked the remote in her hand a few times mumbling curses.

"I think you broke it," Helvetica said.

At that moment, above the Magistrix's head appeared, blazoned in orange: "!#%"

"I guess I'll live," she said. Then she looked at Helvetica like a stranger about to offer her candy. "How would you like a quest, little girl?"

"Um. Sure."

A clipboard appeared from thin air, along with a quill pen sporting a crimson plume. Eona looked up at Helvetica, noted her name, checked something off and finally nodded.

"Welcome to the Blood Scouts, Helvetica. It's time for you to earn your first merit badge! Isn't that keen?" She clasped her hands together and bounced on her heels. "Today we're going to work on basket weaving, blood elf style. That means you get to kill a lot of stuff! Isn't that keen? The Burning Crystals—the green floating objects to the west of the Sunspire here—have long been used to power the isle's experimentations. The mana wyrms were their guardians, but...driven them errant from our lack of magical control over them."

"Mana what?"

"Wyrms," the Magistrix said. "You'll understand when you kill a few. Bring me ten mana wyrm spines and I'll show you how to weave them into a lovely carrying basket. You can keep all the junk you kids pick up along the way in it."

Helvetica looked in the direction Eona had pointed. Peeking out between several columns of alabaster and gold, hovered a large, green crystal that effervesced with emerald malevolence. The crystal appeared slightly lopsided and reminded her of a shard of green glass—a very angry shard of green glass. Floating within the sea of Mt. Dew carbonation, a pair of burning red eyes glared at her. The crystal seemed to lean around the column just so that it could glower. Blue lights flitted about the base of the crystal like eels swimming through coral; she guessed those were probably the mana wyrms.

"I'm going to guess that's a Burning Crystal," she said.

"Yes, yes," Eona replied absently. "Now get a move on. Bring me back those spines. Just do it soon, you're blocking my view of Gregory. He's stripping again."

Helvetica glanced behind her and that same male blood elf from before was dancing again and taking off his clothing.

Magistrix Eona cheered and egged him on. Helvetica drew her sword, deciding it wasn't worth staying to watch—even though he wasn't bad looking—and headed warily towards the Burning Crystal and those yet-liberated spines.


End file.
